should have given rise to such fears; but Spencer had been
the rudest, most ferocious opponent of all. The Federalists were
afraid of him because they believed with William P. Van Ness, the
young friend of Burr, that he was "governed by no principles or
feelings except those which avarice and unprincipled ambition
inspired."[121] Van Ness wrote with a pen dipped in gall, yet, if
contemporary criticism be accepted, he did not exaggerate the feeling
entertained for Spencer by the Federalists of that day. Like DeWitt
Clinton, he was a bad hater, often insolent, sometimes haughty, and
always arbitrary. After he left the Federalist party and became a
member of the celebrated Council of 1801, he seemed over-zealous in
his support of the men he had recently persecuted, and unnecessarily
severe in his treatment of former associates. "The animosity of the
apostate," said Van Ness, "cannot be controlled. Savage and
relentless, he thirsts for vengeance. Such is emphatically the temper
of Ambrose Spencer, who, after his conversion, was introduced to a
seat in the Legislature, by his new friends, for the express purpose
of perplexing and persecuting his old ones."[122] Spencer never got
over being a violent partisan, but he was an impartial, honest judge.
The strength of his intellect no one disputed, and if his political
affiliations seemed to warp his judgment in affairs of state, it was
none the less impartial and enlightened when brought to bear on
difficult questions of law.

[Footnote 121: _Letters of "Aristides"_, p. 42.]

[Footnote 122: _Letters of "Aristides"_, p. 42.]

The timely resignation of John Armstrong from the United States Senate
made room for DeWitt Clinton, who, however, a year later, resigned the
senatorship to become mayor of New York. The inherent strength of the
United States Senate rested, then as now, upon its constitutional
endowment, but the small body of men composing it, having
comparatively little to do and doing that little by general assent,
with no record of their debates, evidently did not appreciate that it
was the most powerful single chamber in any legislative body in the
world. It is doubtful if the framers of the Constitution recognised
the enormous power they had given it. Certainly DeWitt Clinton and his
resigning colleagues did not appreciate that the combination of its
legislative, executive, and judicial functions would one day
practically dominate the Executive and the Congress, for